1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetic recording medium and a method of manufacturing the magnetic recording medium, and more particularly, to a magnetic recording medium having a patterned granular structure and a method of manufacturing the magnetic recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various methods have been proposed to fabricate a magnetic recording medium having a magnetic grain pattern. They include: 1) forming a nano hole pattern on a substrate using a nano-imprint method, followed by forming a recording layer by electrolytic plating, vapor deposition, or the like to fill nano holes formed on the substrate; 2) forming a nano pillar pattern on a substrate including a recording layer through the nano-imprint method or the like and etching the recording layer; 3) forming nano pillars on a substrate using a nano-imprint method and etching the substrate to form a nano pillar array on the substrate, followed by depositing a recording layer on the substrate, which is provided with the nano pillar array, so as to form a physically separated nano pillar array structure; or 4) depositing a recording layer on a substrate, and patterning the recording layer by implanting ions selectively into the recording layer using a stencil mask having nano holes so as to selectively change magnetic characteristics of the recording layer.
The magnetic characteristics of recording layers formed by the above-described methods are usually inferior compared to a recording layer formed by sputtering in a conventional continuous method. Unfortunately, sputtering is also disadvantageous since the magnetic characteristics of a recording medium containing the recording layer produced by sputtering can deteriorate or the recording layer can be contaminated during the deposition of the recording layer on nano holes or nano pillars or during subsequent operations such as etching, lifting-off, or ion implantation.